States challenge Trump's revised travel ban

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey declared on March 9 that Massachusetts will be joining fellow states in suing President Donald Trump to block his new travel ban executed earlier in the week. Trump's new executive order has removed Iraq from the former list of travel-restricted countries and suspended the refugee program for 120 days. Healey stated that the second ban, despite such changes, remains discriminatory and unconstitutional. Massachusetts will join Washington, Hawaii, Oregon, and New York in requesting Judge James Robart to apply his previous travel ban suspension to the revised ban. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson recently stated that the new ban still violates the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution. Despite legal challenges, the revised ban is scheduled to take effect on March 16.

A federal judge for the US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin granted (PDF) a temporary restraining order against President Trump's revised immigration ban on March 10 to a Syrian asylum seeker and his family. The order is limited to the man and his family, and will remain in effect only until the asylum request for his wife and child is resolved. The judge found that returning to Aleppo while waiting for the outcome of the asylum request would pose, "significant risk of irreparable harm" for the family. The man has been in the US since 2014 and was granted asylum in 2016. (Jurist)